Scents and sensibility

Date: 24/07/1997

ALL over the EU, small pockets of researchers, handsomely funded by the European Commission, are quietly going about their allotted tasks.

In laboratories and out on the streets, thousands of dedicated workers are collating facts and figures, gathering information and then delivering assessments on the basis of which politicians acting on expert advice will set the standards by which we and future generations will live.

There is nothing on this planet that cannot be the subject of highly-financed research. There is money in the Euro-kitty to buy white coats and clipboards for boffins analysing everything from the relative density of the average cornflake to the angle of inclination of a blade of grass on a south-facing field in a force nine gale.

All of it is useful information. Anything can be analysed, dissected, assessed and discussed until its findings can be found a useful role in society.

How many EU directives currently in force have their origins in inquisitive batches of researchers poking their noses into things normal people take for granted? And when I say noses, I mean noses, because the question Voicebox is asking today is, whatever happened to the sniffers?

The sniffers, financed by the Commission in one of the most sensitive of studies ever conducted, are at the very sharp end of EU research. For months, nostrils have been quivering in a desperate search for that most elusive of answers - just how much smell are we prepared to put up with?

Using a new scientific unit for quantifying smell, these people have been measuring smells in offices to try to establish some kind of Euro-smelly norm.

Basically, the sniffers have been sticking their noses into places where other people would turn up theirs, looking for results.

But Voicebox has been waiting in vain for an announcement about the findings. Perhaps the team found there was nothing to report, but this is highly unlikely: research groups of all kinds always find something to say, for fear of endangering their funding.

Take the Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Ageing, which has spent months assessing the origins of bad temper in old people. It recently stunned the world of science and technology by announcing that grumpy old people are just grumpy young people who have grown old, rather than pleasant young people who have acquired grumpiness as a result of ageing.

Fortunately, no Euro-cash was expended on this research as it was American-based, but we watchdogs of the public purse need to be sure that no similar futile exercises are being conducted in our name.

For instance, we don't want the sniffers to report back that they have discovered that life is a bit smelly and that we've just got to put up with it, or that dogs and cats are smelly in confined places in warm weather.

These things we know and the fact that we have heard no more about the sniffers since last year could indicate that they have discovered that there is nothing more to find out. In which case, we must demand our money back.

Just how much money is being spent on this project and of what value the results could possibly be are closely guarded secrets but, in theory, nothing could be as valuable as completing the Euro-quest for a smelly norm, not just for offices but for the people who inhabit them as well.

The panel of 15 researchers was reported late last year as having already measured the 'olf rating' of about 25 offices, which is not that many as a proportion of the European office total.

Perhaps they have sniffed a few more by now. They have also been assessing filing cabinets and photocopiers to work out how much odour they release. They have been sniffing empty offices and objects in them because they believe some modern materials give off small amounts of gases that can make people sick.

But the trickiest part of the research must be sniffing people while they work, on the grounds that they too can give off gases that can make people sick. These sniffers have, doubtless, been getting right up people's noses.

The EU has been funding the research as part of a plan to introduce new measures to control indoor air pollution. By arriving at an overall olf factor for offices, scientists can calculate how much ventilation is needed to meet new regulations. The best buildings, say researchers, should have 0.1 olfs per square metre.

The olf was invented by a Danish scientist, Professor Ole Fanger, and you will just have to take my word for it that this is not made up. Olf is short for olfactory, which the dictionary defines as “of or pertaining to the sense of smell”.

The professor worked out the benchmark for the olf unit by using a panel of 160 sniffers to smell about 1,000 Europeans. From this he worked out an average smell rating per person.

An average smoker, he determined, emits six olfs, but a trained athlete exercising vigorously gives off 20 olfs. Children have a slightly higher than average olf rating because they are more active.

“The olf is the pollution perceived by human beings that is generated by the standard person. We're talking of a few hundred chemicals in different quantities. Some are very hard to measure,” says Fanger.

Nevertheless, research beyond Europe has validated the olf as the bench-mark of smell, and it goes without saying that an individual olf rating can vary hugely depending on a person's shape and size and general nature.

There isn't much to choose between Europeans and the Japanese and Americans, who produced similar results but, as the professor says: “If you look at individuals, it is well known that there can be large differences due to diet and so forth.”

It is surprising therefore that the olf rating has not already crept into our conversation when discussing our fellow beings. “Have you met the new chap in DGVI? Very nice fellow, apparently. Dark hair, well dressed, good sense of humour and a very low olf rating.”

So, what has happened to the sniffers? Where are the answers? How much has this cost us all?

The only thing Voicebox can smell at the moment is a rat.